


i've caught you lonely (you're a fool for that)

by gillywulf



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Moving On, Past Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24782365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gillywulf/pseuds/gillywulf
Summary: Shadow Weaver is gone - obviously, they watched her get vaporized - but feelings run deep and tangled. Like the cracks in the mask she left and the roots of the garden she had tended to.Adora and Catra do what they can to move on.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 36





	i've caught you lonely (you're a fool for that)

**Author's Note:**

> short and sweet, my trademark
> 
> title from Wild by The Japanese House

She finds Adora in an overgrown garden. 

Catra watches her - casually, you know, hip propped against a pillar and her arms crossed at her chest - as she wanders from plant to plant with a watering can, giving each each bloom a long consideration before sprinkling it with water. She gives a considerable about to a small cactus looking thing and it’s then that Catra realizes Adora has no idea what she’s doing. She lets herself take in just how cute she looks so absorbed in her self-directed task before she shatters it.

“Hey Adora,” she takes a particular delight in the way her girlfriend jumps, “picked up a new hobby? Map making not doing it for yah?” She strides across the tile, taking in the plants and the water basin in the middle as Adora recovers from the fright. 

“Why- you know what, never mind.” Adora straightens, takes a deep breath, and laces her fingers through Catra’s once she’s close enough. “No, map making is good. This is...something else,” she admits slowly. Catra is instantly curious. What does that mean? Why does it not feel like this is something Adora enjoys? The past month had been a struggle in learning peacetime (even with all the lost clones and former Horde soldiers) and Catra has taken it as an exercise in letting both herself and Adora breathe. Even when she wants nothing more than to know, to know, to _know_. She allows herself be directed to sit against a planter where they face something blooming white flowers. Catra likes they way each petal seems to spread out as far as it can in any given direction. It makes them look open and cheerful.

“What is it?” she asks after they get comfortable. Adora leans into her side.

“Shadow Weaver came here a lot. This was her garden or something, I don’t really know.” The shocking tightness that takes Catra’s stomach at the sound of the name is debilitating, but she chomps down on the feeling so Adora can get through her thought. “Glimmer said I could do what I wanted with it, keep it up, tear it out, burn it, she doesn’t care,” she explains. It takes all of Catra’s resolve and self-discipline to push down the hot, slithering feeling. Adora hasn’t done anything wrong. Listen first, she reminds herself. 

“And you want to grow it?” she asks once she has herself under control. She doesn’t say her preference (fire is involved).

“Not... _really_. I don’t _know_ what to do with it. Remembering her here makes all of the bad stuff rise to the surface and I don’t want to be here or to actively grow it. But, she was also,” she pauses long enough to sigh and run a hand through her ponytail, “important. I’m hoping that watering the plants will either give me insight or keep it in some sort of stasis until I know what I want to do. I don’t think I’ll ever have a clear idea of what to do when it comes to her.” The hot slithering thing in Catra’s throat fizzles to a low simmering. Her own feelings about Shadow Weaver are no less complicated and it’s somehow reassuring to know that she isn’t alone in that. She pulls her knees up to her chest.

“I went back to the Heart for her mask. A day or two after everything,” she admits quietly. “It’s under the bed because I don’t know what to do with it.” A silence heavy with understanding and pain settles over them and for a long time they lean on each other and do nothing else. They can vaguely hear sounds from the castle, signs of life going on as the world rebuilt and reorganized. “What a pair we make,” she mumbles, dropping her head to Adora’s shoulder. There’s a beat before Adora twitches. 

“Under our bed?” she asks. “Not like, a really high shelf in the library that no one could get to? We make out there.” 

“I panicked, okay?” Catra grumbles, wrapping her arms around Adora’s middle. She can’t deny the safety their confessions make her feel. She had always desperately wanted her feelings for Shadow Weaver to be cut and dry. It would have been considerably easier, if nothing else. Instead, she was stuck mourning a woman who was never anything but monstrous with her (and Adora, whatever she’d tried to convince herself when she was younger, she was working through it with Perfuma and there was definitely kind of progress).

“I think we should bury it,” Adora mumbles when Catra had settled into her, “I think we should bury it in the middle of the Crimson Waste with no marker or anything. Or maybe airdrop it over Beast Island.”

“And we will learn how to tend to this place. _Properly_ ,” she pokes her girlfriend in the ribs and revels in the laugh it earns.

“Shed the bad and encourage the growth. Are we being too literal?” Catra shrugs at the question. 

“We can do what we want, literal or otherwise.” It feels like they’ve reached some precipice. An achievement of agreement they were never sure how to approach. Catra’s lungs feel freer and she fills them with the scent of Adora without an ounce of anxiety. It feels good. She almost laughs at herself. How mushy. “You know, i came to find you for a reason, right?” 

“What?” 

“Sparkles wanted us to try some new thing she learned to make in the kitchen.” Adora’s head swings to her as if on a swivel and she can’t help but laugh at the panic in her eyes. 

“Not after the last one, no, absolutely not, let’s go.” Adora stands, pulls Catra up by her her wrists and starts leading her out of the garden. Catra can’t help but laugh. Does her girlfriend even know where she’s going? In the end though, does it actually matter? She’ll follow anyway. She lets the warmth of the knowledge seep into her chest and spread though the rest of her.


End file.
